Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
#1Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 7:27pm
I guess this topic is straying from the usual band of musicals discussed on here, but I've learned a lot about the book, films, and musical lately, and I'd like to know if anyone here saw the musical version...
Basically my question is:
To anyone who saw the musical, what was it like? What were your opinions on it? How was Dorothy Loudon?...etc.
"Light the candles! Get the ice out! Roll the rug up, it's today!"
Updated On: 2/18/08 at 07:27 PM
#2re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 7:35pm
Oh..how I wish I could say that I had.
I have read the script and heard one of "those" recordings. I found it to be a top-form Lerner adaptation.
And.. judging solely from the recording, Loudon is perfect: vulgar, vulnerable, funny, annoying. All things Charlotte Haze.
The material is disturbing..sometimes even flesh-crawling. But it hard to imagine a better musical version of that novel.
What great ones do the less will prattle of
#2re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 7:37pm
I'm dying to see the film versions and to read the book. I know these may not be easy to track down, but they are offered publicly, correct? They're not banned in the U.S, are they?
And how I wish I could have seen it too.
"Light the candles! Get the ice out! Roll the rug up, it's today!"
#3re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 7:42pm
Oh yes, honey, they are available.
The dvd of the the first movie version is readily available. I'm not sure about the Irons version.
The novel is at any Borders.
Here is link to a previous discussion:
https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?boardid=1&boardname=bway&thread=865059#3439979
What great ones do the less will prattle of
#4re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 7:44pmBrent Barrett does a few songs from the show on his Alan Jay Lerner Cd.
#5re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 7:54pm
Oh, wow. I should've done a search before this. Thank you very much!
And I'll definitely go and buy the book. I know it's very disturbing, but I'm so interested in it's story.
"Light the candles! Get the ice out! Roll the rug up, it's today!"
#6re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 8:04pm
Off-Topic, but..
Has any read this:
Book Description
A leading German scholar reveals the secret history of Nabokov's infamous novel.
Does it ring a bell? The first-person narrator, a cultivated man of middle age, looks back on the story of an amour fou. It all starts when, traveling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a pre-teen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator—marked by her forever—remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.
We know the girl and her story, and we know the title. But the author was Heinz von Eschwege, whose tale of Lolita appeared in 1916 under the pseudonym Heinz von Lichberg, forty years before Nabokov's celebrated novel took the world by storm. Von Lichberg later became a prominent journalist in the Nazi era, and his youthful work faded from view. The Two Lolitas uncovers a remarkable series of parallels between the two works and their authors. Did Vladimir Nabokov, author of an imperishable Lolita who remained in Berlin until 1937, know of von Lichberg's tale? And if so, did he adopt it consciously, or was this a classic case of "cryptoamnesia," with the earlier tale existing for Nabokov as a hidden, unacknowledged memory?
In this extraordinary literary detective story, Michael Maar casts new light on the making of one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.
What great ones do the less will prattle of
#7re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 8:09pmOh wow, I've never heard of that! Well that's another one I'll have to read!
"Light the candles! Get the ice out! Roll the rug up, it's today!"
#8re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 8:57pm
I'm still hoping for a studio cast recording.
BK, you have to try and get that recording done...pretty please.
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
miss pennywise
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/7/04
#9re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 10:16pmOne of the few LPs I still own is of Nabokov reading from LOLITA. It's like music.
http://www.roches.com/television/ss83kod.html
**********
"If any relationship involves a flow chart, get out of it...FAST!"
~ Best12Bars
roquat
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/25/05
#10re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 11:14pmAn old friend of mine was actually one of the original rehearsal pianists on this show. All he would ever say about it was that Alan Jay Lerner was impossible to work with and Dorothy Loudon was a darling...part of the problem with the show was that her character was killed in Act One and no one wanted to come back for Act Two. I've heard some of the material and most of it strikes me as just right; it's just that audiences couldn't conceive of a serious, tragic musical "Lolita" at that time. It's probably the best musical that could have been made from the novel, though.
I ask in all honesty/What would life be?/Without a song and a dance, what are we?/So I say "Thank you for the music/For giving it to me."
#11re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/18/08 at 11:47pm
It's just as hard to find as the bootleg Blue Pear record of the score, but, when Ben Bagley issued his "Alan Jay Lerner Revisited" album on CD, he brought Dorothy Loudon into the studio to record "Sur le Quais"
Why the hell doesn't DRG get the rights to re-issue the Ben Bagley/Painted Smiles records?
"A coherent existance after so many years of muddle" - Desiree' Armfelt, A Little Night Music
"Life keeps happening everyday, Say Yes" - 70, Girls, 70
"Life is what you do while you're waiting to die" - Zorba
#12re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/19/08 at 1:55amOf all the 'flop musicals' of the past 40 years, this, in my opinion is the one that most deserves to be seen again but is least likely to be. Its got a lot of brilliant things about it.
husk_charmer
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/19/06
#13re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/19/08 at 8:20pmI love that 'Going, Going, Gone' sounds almost exactly like the one song in CITY OF ANGELS, whose name ALWAYS escapes me.
http://www.youtube.com/huskcharmer
#14re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 2/19/08 at 8:22pmThe song from CITY OF ANGELS is "All You Have to Do Is Wait," and it sounds EXACTLY like "Going, Going, Gone." Is it the same music?
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
#15re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 3/13/08 at 9:00pmSondheimBoy, Dorothy's Studio Version of "Sur Les Quais" is a disgrace, and it's certainly not her fault. The song was sped up, the grand orchestrations stripped, and the song was abriged. It sounds like an upbeat version of the song, and I was completely let down because it could have been fantastic.
"Light the candles! Get the ice out! Roll the rug up, it's today!"
#16re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 3/13/08 at 9:38pmThe more I listen to the studio version, the more I find to like about it, but it's just a shame it was never professionaly recorded in it's original, glorified, entirety.
"Light the candles! Get the ice out! Roll the rug up, it's today!"
LadyRosecoe
Broadway Star Joined: 8/4/07
#17re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 8/9/08 at 3:14am
I'd like to bump this one up in hopes that anyone here managed to catch this in 1971. I'd be desperate to know what was happening during the dance/musical interlude of "Sur Les Quais!" It sounds so haunting, sweet, desperate, and catchy fun all at the same time.
I don't really like the structure the musical takes on, fitting all the material and quirks of the novel into two hours. The Jeremy Irons film re-make adapted it the best, but the original Kubrick Lolita is also phenomenal.
SporkGoddess
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/27/05
#18re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 8/9/08 at 12:40pm
Lolita is a brilliant, brilliant book, but very difficult to get through due to the subject matter.
It's fascinating how the reader, too, gets seduced by Humbert because of the beautiful language in the novel.
Jimmy, what are you doing here in the middle of the night? It's almost 9 PM!
#19re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 8/9/08 at 2:59pm
LadyRosecoe, from what I've heard during the dance break in Sur Les Quais, she is dancing with several waiters. It's incredibly haunting to see her so happy, and then to know what comes next. It's brilliance.
Again, I'm not positive that that is what happens, but that is what I was told.
"Light the candles! Get the ice out! Roll the rug up, it's today!"
LadyRosecoe
Broadway Star Joined: 8/4/07
#20re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 8/10/08 at 3:12am
So that explains all that exhilarating stomping and applause. I figured she'd had to be doing some extremely crazy dancing to elicit an applause and I just couldn't understand her or the character fitting that type of moment. Thanks for the visual!
The scene following is also very great too, her ferocity against Lolita appearing so quickly after that grand time in the last song was one of the more impressive moments I think.
TheEnchantedHunter
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/27/05
#21re: Did anyone on here see: Lolita, My Love?
Posted: 8/10/08 at 10:34am
LOLITA is not a difficult book in the least and, in fact, reads likes the most compelling of page-turners. But its literary and thematic intentions are completely impossible to recreate on the stage. Given Alan Jay Lerner's own personal psychology, he was, in fact, the ONLY person in the history of the musical who could have done justice to the novel. But by that stage of his career, there was simply too much success and too many 'distractions' in his life to do the job right. 'Tis a pity. And John Barry, then as now, was a composer of second-rate treacle who should have stayed in Hollywood where he belonged so he could churn out his one-syrupy-theme-that-sounds-alike-in-every-movie and leave Broadway to the experts.
Vivian Darkbloom
Ramsdale, New England
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